Nvidia courts “global technology superpower” India

Updated on: 05 September 2023

Justinas Vainilavičius
Senior Journalist

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang has met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss India’s potential in artificial intelligence (AI).

This is the second meeting between Huang and Modi, underscoring Nvidia’s increasing role in the country’s “fast-growing” technology industry, the California-based company said.

The meeting at Prime Minister Modi’s official residence in the capital New Delhi comes after the country became the first nation to successfully land on the Moon’s challenging south pole and the launch of its first mission to the Sun.

India’s space program has boosted the country’s confidence and put the global focus on its technological prowess – something Nvidia, the top supplier of AI chips, is keen to tap into.

Prime Minister Modi described his meeting with Huang as “excellent” on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“We talked at length about the rich potential India offers in the world of AI,” Modi said, adding that Huang was “appreciative of the strides India has made in this sector and was equally upbeat about the talented youth of India.”

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Following his meeting with Modi, Huang also met several dozen researchers from India’s leading science institutions for an informal dinner.

Nvidia said the attendees represented a “dazzling collection” of top minds in fields including large language models, astrophysics, medicine, quantum computing, and natural language processing.

The use of technology to address “some of the grand scientific challenges of our time” was discussed during the dinner, Nvidia said.

Technological solutions to overcome language barriers, improve agricultural yields and health care services, and transform digital economies were also touched upon.

Nvidia’s ties in India go back almost two decades, when in 2004 it began operations in Bengaluru. It now has four engineering development centers in the country – in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Hyderabad, and Pune – where it employs more than 3,800 people.

There are also more than 320,000 India-based developers in Nvidia’s developer program, according to the company.